The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (27 page)

by his actions, he must be mad. He

would respond by saying that the

early communists had done exactly

the same thing. They had risked

imprisonment for something they

believed in. The doctors would then

respond by saying he was having

delusions of grandeur, since he had

compared himself to Lenin. They

always had an answer.

‘Since all dictatorships proclaim

heaven on earth, all who refuse to

live in that paradise must be crazy –

or have been bought by agents of

foreign

intelligence,’

Plyushch

wrote.

During that time, he was treated

with haloperidol, a powerful anti-

psychotic drug that also has strong

sedative properties. It was one of the

few such drugs produced in the

Soviet

Union,

explaining

its

popularity with Soviet doctors. He

was also given insulin shots,

specifically to suck up the sugar in

his blood and plunge him into

artificial comas.

Medvedev was fortunate in

having a twin who believed in his

sanity. Roy mobilized support,

including from Sakharov, and won

release for his brother. Not all

dissidents were so lucky in their

friends and relations, however, and

some spent months inside, enduring

regular injections of sulphazin. That

was a suspension of sulphur in

peach oil, which had no medical use

beyond causing pain and inducing

fever. Plyushch saw a fellow inmate

nearly killed by an injection of

sulphazin.

For now, Father Dmitry’s friend

Fedotov avoided all that. He was

released after a few days, as was

Father Vladimir, but it was the kind

of harassment intended to make

them rethink their behaviour.

It did not work, of course.

Father Vladimir: ‘When the

police volunteers came in their red

armbands and were supposed to

keep order, we wore white armbands

and said we would keep our own

order.’

Zoya senior: ‘They asked us if

we were expecting a high-up boss or

someone, and Father Dmitry said we

were expecting the highest boss of

all. It was Easter, you see.’

Father Vladimir mused on Father

Dmitry.

‘He was not scared to sacrifice

himself, you know. In a totalitarian

state, if someone gets in trouble, then

they are avoided. This is how the

state creates order. It was not just

those who were under investigation

who were avoided, but people who

knew them as well. There was no

severe repression, like there had

been in the 1940s, but it was not

necessary because the fear survived.

That was how the state controlled the

people, by making them fear each

other. Father Dmitry did not have

this fear.

‘When I ended up in Father

Dmitry’s big family, I felt I was with

people I could trust. He did not aim

to create this separate society, it just

happened. He created a free society.

He was not God, but he was holy.

What I experienced then, it was so

bright and sharp for me. What I had

with him I remember like it was

yesterday,

I

remember

that

brightness more than’, he waved his

hand around to indicate the modern

world, ‘more than this even.’

As we walked out of the church

and back into the trees, he described

how they had lived in Grebnevo.

They ate in shifts, since there were

always at least sixty people there,

and only seventeen could fit at the

table.

‘While we ate, someone read out

a religious book while Father Dmitry

rested. Then he would come out and

the discussions started. I used to

collect the questions. That was one

of my jobs. Some people were

happy

to

ask

the

questions

themselves, but others preferred to

write them down, they were still

scared of what might happen. This

lasted all day, several hours anyway.

If the service ended at twelve or one,

then we would not leave until six or

seven in the evening. If we came on

Saturday, we would remove the table

and take these screens down off the

windows, put mattresses on them

and sleep. One morning Father

Dmitry came out and laughed, there

were so many of us. You could not

even turn over in bed.’

We walked along the uneven

ground, and through a gap in the

crumbling perimeter wall. Here

apparently was a palace complex,

which had been done up since Father

Vladimir was last here. It had been

ruinous in his day, and he was keen

to see it in its proper glory.

The first herald of the complex

was not promising. Someone had

defecated in the middle of the path,

and it lay stinking and covered in

flies, next to a smeared wedge of

toilet paper. We stepped over that

towards a tent erected by a film crew

in the courtyard. They would not be

filming

an

aristocrats’

drama,

however,

because

the

palace

complex that Father Vladimir was so

keen to see was in ruins, the bricks

exposed and the plaster peeling off

in chunks.

Father Vladimir was shocked. It

turned out that the complex had

indeed been renovated, but had then

burned down just before the opening

ceremony. He looked around at the

mess, the piles of filth and the

collapsing glory of the complex.

‘You know, say what you like

about the people who were in power

then, at least they were not these

criminals like we have now. Yes,

they arrested me, but they did not

beat me, whereas now so many

people have been killed just for

money.’

I said, surprised, that he sounded

nostalgic. He seemed to long for the

days when the police took him so

seriously they would smash down a

door and drag him away.

‘I am nostalgic. If you think of

all the horrors people live through,

from these criminals. All authority is

from God, and in the 1990s there

was no authority. Yes, they were

against us in those days, in the

1970s, but at least there was

authority of some kind. At least then

the oppression was for ideological

reasons, now it’s just for the

money,’ he said, looking up at the

buildings, and nodding at the gaping

windows.

‘Lacking

a

master

destroys more than any enemy,’ he

said.

Trees were growing from the

tops of the walls of the old palace

now, and the rot looked irreversible.

I was not sure whether to take it, like

he did, as a metaphor for the whole

country or not. I could see his point

that the Soviet Union at least looked

after its citizens, but I could not

agree that that was justification for

forcibly injecting them with anti-

psychotic drugs if they held a

different opinion.

The lake was ahead of us, and

provided a more cheerful topic of

conversation. Dozens of local kids

swam and splashed in the shallows.

Others were rowing out in an

inflatable dinghy, their friends trying

to drag them out. When they failed,

they ducked under the water and

heaved

the

whole

boat

over,

shrieking. According to local legend,

the lake was created in honour of

Catherine the Great in the shape of

the Russian letter ‘ye’, which is the

first letter in Yekaterina, her first

name, although it did not look much

like one when I called up the satellite

picture that evening.

That evening, I read some more

of Father Dmitry’s writings from

this period. He self-published a little

newspaper, which he called
In the

Light of the Transfiguration
. He

stuck it up on the wall in Grebnevo

so all his visitors could be instantly

informed of the troubles and

triumphs of his flock, and of their

friends throughout the Soviet Union.

A few issues of the paper were

reprinted in a three-volume edition

of his works published in 2004, and

in them he detailed the attacks on

him and his spiritual children, and

taunted the authorities with his

defiance.

‘O Godless ones! You have

everything in your hands, I have

nothing but faith in God,’ he wrote.

‘To send out an army with weapons

against a weaponless priest is

shameful and embarrassing.’

He then listed his demands: a

printing press of his own; the right

to speak out wherever he wanted;

and the right to hold services in one

of the churches in the Moscow

Kremlin. That, he said, would even

up the forces. He was beginning to

talk as if he was at war with the

government.

A couple of days later, I decided to

investigate

the
Literary Gazette
’s

allegations against Father Dmitry.

Perhaps he really had published

poems

in

a

Nazi-sponsored

newspaper. It was not the most

terrible of crimes if he had, but the

article was very specific in its

information. Admittedly it had said

Father Dmitry was aged twelve

when his work was printed, which

would

have

meant

the

Nazi

occupation started a decade earlier

than it actually did, but it was

curiously exact in naming the

newspaper as the
New Way
and

saying it had been published in

Klintsy. It even gave a name for

Father Dmitry’s poem: ‘Song from a

Cellar’.

‘The Hitlerites didn’t give a

damn about the literary form, but the

content was to their liking, and was

entirely consistent with Goebbels’s

propaganda,’ it said.

I felt I had a sense of Father

Dmitry’s character by now. His

strength lay in his refusal to

compromise. He held firm to his

own beliefs in all circumstances, no

matter what was demanded of him.

If he had published a poem in a Nazi

newspaper, it would reveal a flaw in

his character, particularly if the poem

did indeed chime with Goebbels’s

propaganda, since it would mean he

had collaborated with the occupiers.

I had already visited the Lenin

Library’s store of papers printed

under occupation when I looked for

information on Father Dmitry’s

childhood, so I returned to that high-

ceilinged parquet-floored room up

under the library’s flat roof, with its

spider plants and striplights, and

found the
New Way
, published in

Klintsy, in the card index.

A few minutes later, the helpful

librarian brought it over to me,

safely enclosed in a stiff card folder.

It was stamped ‘restricted’ – in

Soviet

times,

only

researchers

approved by the K G B would have

had access to this. Now, anyone

could read it. After all, no one really

cares any more.

The paper was bad quality,

yellowed and full of holes. Its

masthead said, above the words

‘under

the

Swastika

flag

to

freedom’, that the
New Way
was

published

on

Thursdays

and

Mondays. I sat and began to read. It

was pretty crude.

‘The German army is bringing

freedom to the whole Russian

people, together we will defeat

communism and secure the dawn of

personal well-being,’ said one issue

in huge letters. And there were

collaborators among the Russians

who helped set the tone.

‘Yid-Bolshevism has not killed